The New East
by Aoi Shoudou
Summary: What if Kirie had abandoned her duties as the Rope Maiden and ran away with her lover? Does the love of one outweigh the life of many?


The New East  
  
A/N: Fanfiction.net has finally fixed its little error with the ellipses in Microsoft Word. Thank God…Look, I can use them all I want! What a relief! Oh. Well, uh, I digress. As far as I recall, the name of Kirie's lover is never given in the game, so I strapped him with the name Takashi. Not bad, eh? Aside from that, not much to say, really…read on! (Look! Another ellipses!)  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Kirie had run.  
  
Run from her life.  
  
She watched the hull of the boat part the waves, an oversized wooden dagger tearing the flesh of the ocean, seafoam blood seeping from the wound. Though she'd been advised by the crew several times not to look overboard on a boat ride, for fear of seasickness, the navy-blue water was entrancingly beautiful. Kirie couldn't help but look. She had never seen the ocean before.   
  
Takashi was a little alarmed when she'd told him this. He was still having trouble accustoming himself to the fact that she had spent all 18 years of her life confined away in the forest and then, one year ago, taken quickly to the Himuro Mansion. After all, that was the purpose of her existence; a sacrificial dummy, removed from humanity, simply to appease the gates of Hell.   
  
Of course, Takashi had those troubles accustoming himself to any of Kirie's mysterious circumstances. Just yesterday he had been talking with Kirie in the atrium, watching the trees of spring burst into flowers, and basking in the beauty of love, but times changed quickly, and that tranquility had been yanked from right underneath their feet.   
  
She was there, though.  
  
And that was all that mattered.  
  
  
  
  
  
As she met him by the cherry blossom tree on a chilly February morning, Takashi noticed the apprehension in her movements.   
  
"Kirie…what is wrong?" he asked, his eyes penetrating the guise of nonchalance and seeing the fear in her heart. She remained silent. He wouldn't believe her – not now. Instead, she pulled him a little closer into an embrace only lovers could share, and whispered in her ear with her cherry lips tickling it:  
  
"Come to outside my window tonight, but don't let yourself be found. It's very important. Please don't forget." She paused and let a tear fall from her raven black eye. "I love you, Takashi."  
  
As any good lover should, he did remember, and arrived at the Himuro Mansion once again at the stroke of midnight. Peering into the little cell through that window, he saw something horrifying. Kirie was sitting on her knees, eyes shut, clad in robes of almost blinding white, her black hair falling down over her face. Surrounding her was a multitude of eerily glowing candles and eight priests, chanting cruelly unintelligible words in a monotone, each of them holding out their arms. Clasped in their hands were blood-soaked ropes. Takashi struggled to suppress a gasp. He backed slowly away from the site of the ritual, and vowed to see Kirie the next morning.  
  
  
  
She was waiting there at the cherry blossom tree, sitting on the overhang, picking at a loose thread in her blue silk kimono. She looked even more distraught than normal; black circles wreathed her normally-vivacious young eyes and she didn't greet Takashi with her happy smile, but instead a solemn glance of resolve.   
  
"Kirie…I came last night."  
  
She did not reply.   
  
"What was that?"  
  
"Takashi…Take me away from here." He blinked, taken by surprise with her sudden comment. "Far away. I want to get away from here."  
  
He looked into her eyes. She meant it.  
  
"Kirie…As a warrior of the Feudal Army of Japan under the Shogunate of Tokugawa Ieharu, absconding my duties means dishonor upon myself, my family and my country."  
  
"There is no honor in lost love, Takashi."  
  
He stopped. "Kirie…" A spring breeze picked up a cloud of fallen cherry blossoms and danced around the youthful lovers, encircling them briefly in a tangle of pink petals. Kirie brushed Takashi's long jet-black hair out of his face and looked him straight in the eyes with heart-rending sincerity.   
  
"How long will your warrior-hood keep you from the world, Takashi? You must not live for your country. You must live for us." Takashi said nothing, but her earnest words made his heart bleed. She continued.   
  
"Takashi, your honor is important, but our love is more so. Remember all of those promises we made to each other, for each other, under this very same cherry tree? If I can't get away from here…with you…I won't live to see them. I will die tonight."   
  
Those last four words were all Takashi needed to take her away, just as she'd asked of him with those beautifully sincere raven eyes. A single cherry blossom drifted down from the tree and brushed against Kirie's porcelain cheek. He could not deny such beauty, such purity, a wish that meant her life.   
  
That night, Takashi appeared silently at her cell window once more, horse and carriage ready and waiting outside the mansion. The eerie priests surrounded her once more, their bone-chilling chants echoing in his ears. It wasn't possible to get into the cell through the tiny little slit in the wall, and the door adjoining the cell to the atrium was locked, so Takashi had to find his way through the mansion. He was prepared for a fight, with a sword at his side, and without any trepidation he proceeded towards the main hall. Before leaving, though, he took one last look at the cherry blossom tree that he and Kirie had spent so many bright mornings under. He knew that he would never see it again.  
  
Takashi was unfamiliar with the Himuro Mansion. He only knew how to get to the cherry atrium from the entrance hallway, but knew nothing else about its structure. Kirie had once told him that it adjoined from the attic, so he went into the adjoining room from the first hallway. It took him to the fireplace room. The mansion, though a relatively inviting place in the daytime, was cold and frightening at night. He ascended the creaky wooden stairs and turned to his left.  
  
Behind a partition screen was the illuminated silhouette of a beautiful woman playing the koto. Her long fingers gently plucked the strings, creating a painfully lovely tune. The exquisite fluidity of her movements brought a shadow play Takashi had seen at a festival to his mind. As he took a step towards her, about to ask her where the attic was, she and the light suddenly disappeared with a sour note on the stringed instrument. He jumped. Shaken by this mysterious event, he proceeded into the upstairs room. It took him to a small, simple little room with a large koto lying on the ground; next to it laid the bodies of two priests, their white robes cut and stained with blood. Above their corpses stood the master of the family, donning a fiendish mask, and grasped in his hand was a bloodstained sword. Takashi gasped and unsheathed his own sword.  
  
"What are you doing?!" he cried. The family master took a battle stance.  
  
"The demons cannot be appeased…without a sacrifice…" and with an insidious laugh, he charged, droplets of blood flying from his upraised sword. Their cold steel clashed in a shower of sparks; Takashi whirled backwards to avoid the berserk slashes of the crazed man. His blade seemed to be everywhere, and Takashi could barely get a thrust in edgewise without risking his own safety. Locked in a silent war, the two let their swords do the talking.   
  
Takashi finally saw a gap in his opponent's offense, and not missing a beat, brought his blade down. It sang a cruel song as it fell, like some steel bird, and found its target with a sickening splat. Crimson-red blood erupted from the wound like a flight of scarlet cardinals and splashed Takashi, his sword, the room, the koto, the corpses…it was everywhere. The family master emitted a horrible shriek as he collapsed to the ground, dying slowly in a pool of his own blood.   
  
"Bastard!" cried Takashi. "Where is Kirie?"  
  
The family master gave one more long, drawn out laugh, and then his life faded away.  
  
He continued. A door in the koto room took him up into a dark, creaky attic with many twists and turns. Takashi navigated his way through the wooden beams, knowing that he didn't have a moment to spare. Kirie was in danger.   
  
Takashi descended one more set of stairs and, throwing open a door, arrived at Kirie's cell. It was empty. To his left he saw another door, which he dashed through as fast as he possibly could. It took him back to the atrium; as he looked about frenetically to find where to go next, he saw that the door of a mysterious building he'd never seen before was open. Kirie had once told him that it was the Moon Well, which was almost never used. He went into the little building and saw that a large edifice had been moved aside, revealing a descending ladder, which he climbed down hastily. It took him to a dank, blue complex of caves. Stagnant water splashed beneath his sandaled feet as he ran towards the hallway.  
  
He saw them. Eight priests and two warriors, a male and a female were guiding Kirie down through the caves. They were walking down a narrow alcove, with a cliff on either side. A fall would certainly mean death.   
  
"Kirie!" he yelled at the top of his lungs. The convoy stopped dead in its tracks and Kirie, her eyes bound in a tightly-wrapped cloth, turned to him.  
  
"Takashi!" she yelled back. Her voice was racked with fear, but a glint of hope penetrated it. Her lover was here. He would save her.  
  
The priests scuttled away from the conflict, but the two warriors met with Takashi, swords drawn. They attacked from both sides. Takashi couldn't deal with their combined onslaught; they were seasoned fighters, and their grasp of strategy and combat prowess was first-rate. He parried their blows, and put in a few of his own, but could do no damage to the fatal pair.   
  
The woman whipped out a dagger from her side and threw it at him while her partner and Takashi were locked in a battle. It buried itself in Takashi's left shoulder. White-hot pain exploded through his exhausted body; as if they were attuned, he heard Kirie scream "Takashi! Are you all right?" and then a hand hitting flesh as a priest slapped her for her impudence. Face contorted with the agony coursing through his body, he gave a final cry of desperation and shoved the man away with his right shoulder. He was caught off balance; Takashi seized this opportunity and shoved him off of the alcove. The man, screaming, plummeted to his painful death on the ground below. The woman gave a wordless cry and unsheathed her blade once more, charging at Takashi, but she came at him defeated. He quickly buried his katana into her abdomen and ripped it out, instantly killing her, a bloody fountain erupting from her body. She collapsed.  
  
Takashi ran towards the priests. They had no manner of defending themselves, but as he took the blinded Kirie by the hand, they screamed out at him. They were cries of conviction, of hatred; they yelled "Fool! You will doom us all!" It didn't matter what doom would be brought upon them, though. He had Kirie back.   
  
And he'd never lose her.  
  
Takashi sped the carriage towards the boat at Sanshirou Dock, running from no one in particular. Kirie held his hand as he guided the horses through the forest; her grasp on it was so tight that it had started to hurt. She had bandaged up his injury, which was bleeding profusely, and applied medicines to it. They arrived at the boat; though normally a captain wouldn't allow rides on such short notice, bribery was commonplace in Sanshirou, and Takashi exercised this fact.  
  
"Where are we going, Takashi?" asked Kirie, fear still lining her voice.  
  
"East of here, Kirie. The new east. To start a new life."  
  
She put her head upon Takashi's shoulder and, as the sailing crew removed the boat from the dock, gazed out at the brilliant stars with him.  
  
They had escaped.  
  
  
  
Kirie couldn't help but wonder. What had happened to the people of Himuro Mansion? She knew that, because of her, the Strangling Ritual had failed, and the gates of Hell had not been appeased.   
  
Because of her selfishness, people had died.  
  
Takashi walked up to her; he had been taking a bath, and his hair was still wet.   
  
"You shouldn't be out here with a damp head, love. You'll catch a cold." She touched his cheek with her pale, still-trembling hand, and gave him a gentle smile. He smiled back at her, but seeing this was simply too much. Had she betrayed her duty for love? She looked away from him.  
  
"Kirie…?"  
  
"Takashi…Because of me, innocents lost their lives. I killed so many people…Everyone in Himuro Mansion. And it was all because I didn't want to lose you. Is that wrong, Takashi?" He saw the pain in her eyes and understood. She felt true remorse for her actions; her soul looked as if it was being torn apart.  
  
"Life should be lived, Kirie, for no one but yourself and the one who matters most to you. Remember that."  
  
He took Kirie's shoulders, turned her towards him, and kissed her sweet red lips. The brilliant stars, simple pinpricks of white in the sky, shined upon the two, and the deep blue waves crashed underneath them.   
  
They did not need the world. It was a foreign thing to both of them.  
  
To run from duty is shameful, but to run away from love is dishonor of the highest degree.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Closing Notes: I couldn't really remember the layout of the Himuro Mansion, such as where Kirie's cell is. Also, regarding the mention of the Tokugawa Shogunate – according to http://rogue-penguin.com/~laurean/ff/, the Kirie subplot takes place in around 1837, which is when Tokugawa ruled Japan. This turned out pretty well; fairly different from what I usually write, at least. Please dignify my hard work with a review or two, thank you. =) 


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